Put aside the allegations of choking, hitting, scorned lovers and personal vendettas for a moment; if we take a step back, and look at what has been confirmed by both sides, we don’t even know that the former host of Q was dismissed for reasons of sexual conduct — personal or otherwise. In a statement posted on his Facebook page Sunday, Ghomeshi said that he had been fired from the CBC “because of the risk of my private sex life being made public.” Yet the CBC hasn’t actually confirmed the nature of the dismissal, simply saying in a release that its “relationship with Jian Ghomeshi has come to an end.”

That’s not to suggest the possibility that Ghomeshi was fired for something other than sexual behaviour — indeed, a man doesn’t invite nationwide discussion (and let’s face it, mockery) of his sexual kinks to cover up the notion that he was fired for showing up late too many times — but it just goes to show that in terms of verifiable details, the public has next to nothing.

Which is why it’s so strange that in a matter of a couple days, hordes of people have actually situated themselves on one side or another of the debate. Indeed, with remarkable volition, observers are either claiming that Ghomeshi is the victim of anonymous allegations callously spread on the Internet, or that he is a vicious predator who was shielded by his employer until his indiscretions proved too much to contain. Based on what? Two facts, allegations from both sides and a hunch?

In these pages, Christie Blatchford likened the report in the Toronto Star — in which four anonymous women claimed that Ghomeshi either physically abused them during sex, or sexual harassed them — to a type of online McCarthyism. “What we have here,” Blatchford concludes, “is another sordid modern tale of bullying, another low-water mark in journalism, and another man vilified by anonymous accusers.”

Related

Yet, we have no idea whether Ghomeshi was undeservedly slogged by online accusations, or whether he has become a target because he actually did something wrong. Either way, it’s too early to call him a victim. What’s more, Ghomeshi certainly holds some responsibility for the onslaught of attention that has come his way; he hired a crisis communications firm after he was dismissed from CBC and posted a detailed, juicy account of his side of the story on his Facebook page almost immediately after his break with CBC. Arguably, it was fair game for the Toronto Star to move with its story after Ghomeshi opened the door.

That’s not to say, however, that the accusations against Ghomeshi should be taken for anything more than they are — accusations. The women who claim that Ghomeshi assaulted them have not filed police reports, which means there is no way to prove the veracity of their claims. There might be many reasons behind their decision, including privacy concerns, as Blatchford suggests, noting they could simply request publication bans. But they might also not want to face courtroom interrogations, lengthy police questioning or face the man they say assaulted them. That’s all fair. And yet, why talk to a newspaper?

Some people have decided to take their allegations as fact anyhow and convict Ghomeshi without trial, and without charges, for that matter. On the low end of the think-piece-spectrum are articles such as the one written by Elizabeth Hawksworth in the Huffington Post, in which she declares she will “believe Jian’s accuser before I believe a man in power.”

A newspaper report is not a jury. Claims are not proof

“I believe her because so many women are sexually abused and it’s reasons like this why we stay silent,” Hawksworth writes. “Because he can ruin our lives far worse than we can ruin his.”

Sexual abuse does ruin the lives of victims. But claims of sexual abuse also ruins the lives of the accused, and Hawksworth has failed to acknowledge that. A newspaper report is not a jury. Claims are not proof. A man is not automatically guilty because he happens to be powerful. It’s foolish to take a side without the facts. For now, we have no idea whether Ghomeshi is the target of malicious anonymous attacks, or the perpetrator of violent abuses for which he is finally being held responsible. And until we know better, it’s OK to sit in the centre.

Every week, letters editor Paul Russell provides a weekly wrap up of the letters that did not make it into print:

When filmmaker John Greyson and Dr. Tarek Loubani landed in Toronto on Friday night, I doubt there were many National Post readers waiting at the airport to greet them. Throughout the pair’s seven weeks imprisonment in a Cairo jail, readers have been questioning their motives for being in Egypt in the first place, not to mention attending a protest in support of ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi.

“With all of the handwringing and hoopla, one could be forgiven if they mistook Messrs. Loubani and Greyson for rock stars or heroes of some sort,” wrote Donald B. Reid. “In reality, they are political agitators who thought they could indulge, with impunity, in the same antics in Egypt which they get away with in the Western world. They are the authors of their own misfortune. Perhaps a few more months of Egyptian hospitality will give them time to reflect on their folly.”

“I’m wondering if Canadian taxpayers will pay their expenses and their flight home,” mused Michael Devolin. “If these two want adventure in the Muslim Middle East, let them pay their own way. Don’t send the bill to regular Canadians.”

Many readers wondered why Mr. Greyson, an openly gay man, would travel to Egypt, en route to the Gaza Strip — since gays face serious persecution in both areas.

“What’s he doing going to Gaza where gays are publicly executed by Hamas?” asked Felix Golubev. “Does he know that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that respects gay rights? Of course he knows, but when it comes to hating Israel, all barriers go down, and he is no exception.”

Many readers noted Mr. Greyson’s anti-Israeli activities here in Canada, as a leader of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid or as a filmmaker (in 2009, he withdrew his film from the Toronto International Film Festival because Israeli films were also going to be screened there).

“John Greyson and Tarek Loubani should be most thankful to the Harper government for their release from an Egyptian prison,” said Steve Flanagan. “However, I suspect that once back on Canadian soil, these ingrates will be highly critical of the feds and will somehow blame Israel for their own thoughtless misadventure.”

“I’d like to join Queers Against Egyptian Apartheid in welcoming Tarek Loubani and John Greyson back to Canada,” quipped Ron Freedman.

— Many National Post articles resonate with readers on an emotional level — and more than a handful of them have been written by Christie Blatchford. Here are two notes that have come in about her work, the first deals with her columns about a boy who starved to death while under the care of his grandparents and the Catholic Children’s Aid Society.

“Christie Blatchford has been doing such a good job covering the inquiry into the sad death of Jeffrey Baldwin that I felt compelled to comment,” wrote Sean McKay. “Ten years ago I worked in a field that lead me to interact with the child welfare system in Ontario. The dysfunction that I encountered was an important motivator for me to change careers. Particularly, the limited capacity to fix mistakes in the child welfare system … there is virtually no transparency or accountability incorporated into their structures.

“At the time of Jeffrey Baldwin’s murder, politicians in Ontario were standing in the legislature demanding more and real accountability in child welfare,” Mr. McKay continued. “They didn’t accomplish it back then. Will they finish the fight now? Please.”

The second concerns Ms. Blatchford’s coverage of a troubled teenager who committed suicide while being watched by guards in an Ontario jail.

“Christie Blatchford has done a remarkable job of telling the sad story of Ashley Smith,” wrote Patricia Maloney. “It is so incredibly sad in how the system failed her. Having lived with family members who have had a variety of mental illnesses, I am always left wondering why we do such a poor job of providing help to them.

— Did Israel arm its bombers with nuclear weapons in 1973, after Egypt and Syria had launched a surprise and spectacularly successful offensive? An interesting debate about that broke out on the Letters page this week. It started on Monday, with a column by Erol Araf, titled “Incalculable Consequences,” subtitled “How Washington and Moscow found themselves on the brink of a nuclear conflict.”

Two days later, letter-writer Eli Honig countered by noting that a recent New York Times column quoted Israeli cabinet as saying that it is a “four-decade-old mythology … that Israel almost reached the nuclear brink.”

On Thursday, Mr. Araf replied: “There is a vast difference between the advocacy of the official Israeli position relating to ‘constructive nuclear ambiguity’ and documented historical research and analysis … [don’t] buy official lines lox, stock and bagel.”

Mr. Honig replied to that yesterday, with an answer that applied to almost any debate about a historical event.

“There is no compelling reason to buy either side of this long-standing and ongoing debate,” he said. “There is, however, a need to recognize that classical ‘documented historical research and analysis’ too often presents only those aspects of one’s findings that bolster a thesis. The truth is often opaque, and yes, one should be wary of learned historians, journalists, and gullible laypeople who choose to ignore this.”

Journalists often cross over and become politicians, so last week, letters editor Paul Russell asked reader who they thought should be the next writer to make that jump. Many National Post scribes were on that list.

Conrad Black: “He knows stuff’

Prime Minister Lord Black of Crossharbour has a unique ring to it. Even the self-absorbed Americans would sit up and take notice.

Jim Reinhart, Kitchener, Ont.

Wasn’t it Allan Fotheringham who once wrote: “A journalist who wants to be a politician is like a jockey who wants to be a horse.” If that is the case, then I nominate Conrad Black. At least we would get someone who knows his history and has spent time reflecting on the right policies for the country. You could also say we would be getting a horse of a different colour.

Patrick O’Neill, Ottawa.

He is articulate, handsome, educated, adroit and an effusive eidolon of the social scene. Yes, a man above Lords but never lording it over you. A man of the people, internationally renowned and with ample resources. A man who has overcome adversity and will work for public accolades without rancour. Conrad Black would make an excellent prime minister — he has done his time.

Madeleine Wannop Ross Salter, Stoney Creek, Ont.

Conrad Black as the Senate Foreign Relations Chair.

David W. Lincoln, Edmonton.

Winston Churchill (and Spanish philosopher, George Santayana, with a variation of it) said: “Those who fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it,” so I think that Conrad Black, a historian as well as a businessman, would make a great politician.

Barry Bloch, Thornhill, Ont.

I believe Conrad Black could make a significant contribution as a politician, say as Minister of Foreign Affairs. With his encyclopedia like knowledge of history he would be a natural. (But could you see him out electioneering, knocking on doors, etc.).

Jim Gehl, Calgary.

Conrad Black should definitely be considered for Canada’s PM, as he is knowledgeable in a number of areas. I eagerly await this columns to gain new insight into world events. He would definitely have my vote!

Christie Blatchford: ‘She speaks our language’

What has been sadly lacking in Canadian politics for many years is a leader who can inspire the people. Christie Blatchford has this quality, as well as intelligence in spades.

Norbert Kaysser, Port Coquitlam, B.C.

Certainly, any National Post columnist would contribute well to politics. However, Christie Blatchford speaks and understands the language of us “ordinary Canadians.” Further, she would be an outstanding prime minister. On the world stage, in particular, she would tell the likes of Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad where it’s at in no uncertain terms, and would see through the likes of Iran’s Hassan Rowhani in a flash.

Doris Garner, Calgary.

Rex Murphy: ‘Imagine his State of the English address’

I love Rex Murphy — he would make a great prime minister.

Twitter.com/Alexandra Manolesco

Rex with his mellifluous grace is already Prelate of all Canada. From the tar sands of Alberta to the outports of Newfoundland he is exactly what his name says he is. Quite simply he is, Monarch of our great glen. He transcends politics. Please stop me…

D. McClure, Edmonton.

Anyone employed by the CBC for as long as Peter Mansbridge has been is not fit to be prime minister. Sorry Amanda Lang, you neither. I’d make an exception, however, for Rex Murphy.

Rob Nieuwesteeg, Calgary.

Imagine Rex Murphy’s State of the English Language address. Writers who could understand how civilizing forces are becoming unglued in vast portions of the United States are all no longer with us: like Sigmund Freud, Mark Twain and Mordecai Richler. I might add Margaret Atwood, but why risk boring or offending David Gilmour?

Ron Charach, Toronto.

Fearless Barbara Kay

Barbara Kay would make a good justice minister. She would not pander to special interest groups, but would rightly put them in their place and is not afraid to challenge the politically correct establishment. You go girl.

Steve Flanagan, Ottawa.

We need Father de Souza’s honesty

My choice for a journalist to become an MP would be for Father Raymond J. de Souza, although sadly the Vatican does not allow priests to get involved with politics. He has been honest with writing his broadminded views expressed in columns in The Post. This virtue of honesty is lacking today’s Parliament.

Marie Jalsevac-Smit, Collingwood, Ont.

Other choices

It’s uncertain whether she “should” be, but it would surprise very few if CBC business journalist Amanda Lang hadn’t been politically courted at Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s Wakefield, Que. retreat for Canada’s “brain trust” this past August. Whether she holds allegiance to father and former cabinet minister Otto’s Liberal Party might be the Biggar question

Mark Rash, Winnipeg.

I’ve had the misfortune to witness two or three of Pastor Mansbridge’s less than incisive interviews. He would be a disaster in the House, notwithstanding it’s own inadequacies in the art of debate. PM? No bloody way. And who’s Amanda Lang?

Why would any journalist want the job? It would be like aspiring to captain the Titanic with the knowledge that the ship is heading directly towards a huge fiscal iceberg and its momentum is too great to change course. I am assuming, of course, that most journalists have enough economic smarts to see the iceberg in the first place.

Gene Balfour, Thornhill, Ont.

There a number of worthy candidates that would do a great job as politicians. The following have brains, principles and courage: Ezra Levant, Mark Steyn, Barbara Kay, Brian Lilley and Christie Blatchford .

Leigh U. Smith, Burnaby, B.C

Peter Mansbridge. He should open every QP with “Good evening. I’m Peter Mansbridge, and this is Parliament.”

Twitter.com/Oliver Sachgau

Kelly McParland for Minister of Common Sense

Twitter.com/Shane Dingman

Chris Selley for minister of safety regulations. Heather Mallick as ambassador to the moon.

Twitter.com/Alex Banks

Can one imagine Mark Steyn’s speeches and o-eds? Spectacular!

Paula Kelly, Oshawa, Ont.

While any of the Posts columnist and journalists could probably make a seamless transition into politics, only graphic columnist Steve Murray would make a difference at any level. His weekly sage and sound advice to readers, his sympathetic account of his friends and colleagues lives (lovingly retold in “The Posties”) and his kind and gentle illustrations all point to a man who would fill any political role with sincerity and credibility. Murray for mayor or minister; it doesn’t really matter.

Max Finucane, Oakville, Ont.

My choice is brilliant, acerbic and doesn’t mince words; has a host of political and business connections in the United States; has a medical background; like, FDR, is wheel-chair bound and carries that same gravitas; and if we ever got into another war with Germany has a perfect name: Krauthammer, Charles.

Peter Mifsud, Toronto.

Ezra Levant is the only intellectually gifted journalist communicator in Canada.. He promotes our economy’s essential dependency on ethical fuels, exposing the alarmist anti-Canadian, corrupt foreign interference. He is alert to the Canadian vulnerability to global terrorism and to our need to be aggressive in global trading. And he is our best defence against the media bias.

Peter M. Maclean, Kingston, Ont.

Ezra Levant would be good for the Liberal Party of Canada

Twitter.com/M. Huggins ‏

I nominate Jonathan Kay for the Senate. This way, John Moore can reclaim his position as the National Post’s only resident left-wing writer, while Mr. Kay joins his like-minded former journalistic colleagues in the upper chamber.

Milan Mijatovic, Windsor, Ont.

Someone who understands the meaning and value of true capitalism and who, unlike Harper, is willing to move us quickly away from the destructiveness of statism. Perhaps Terence Corcoran or Ezra Levant or Rex Murphy. If Rex, then a good start would be to privatize the CBC.

Glenn Woiceshyn, Calgary.

Mike Holmes, who writes a weekly column in the National Post, would certainly make an interesting politician, especially if he was appointed to a post in regional development and infrastructure.

John Clubine, Toronto.

I would vote for the cast of “This Hour Has 22 Minutes. They would prime minister by committee. What can go wrong?

Twitter.com/Chris McKerracher ‏

Professor and author Robert Spencer would bring some much-needed erudition and clarity to politics. He would clear away the cobwebs that are preventing the truth from coming out. Despite being incorrectly and consistently labelled by the ever blind left-wing consensus media, he is the canary in the mine that everyone is ignoring at their peril.

Jerome Henen, North Vancouver.

There is no such person on the horizon. Benjamin Disraeli, who said “your principles be damned, vote with the party” came close. Winston Churchill also. Socrates came close but consider what happened to him. It appears that being dead is a necessary requirement.

George R. Monckton, London, Ont.

Only journalist who deserves to be PM is Jeffery Simpson of the Globe and Mail. His columns are thought-provoking and to the point. He has a deep understanding of various issues. I think he can be considered as Walter Lippmann of Canada. Mr. Simpson will make a great PM.

Mahmood Elahi, Ottawa.

There are too many journalists in politics now

Why would any journalist want the job? It would be like aspiring to captain the Titanic with the knowledge that the ship is heading directly towards a huge fiscal iceberg and its momentum is too great to change course. I am assuming, of course, that most journalists have enough economic smarts to see the iceberg in the first place.

Gene Balfour, Thornhill, Ont.

After the mess with Mike Duffy and the fiasco with Pamela Wallin, do we really want to go down that bumpy road again?

There are too many journos in there already. What we need is ordinary honest folks.

Twitter.com/Gayle

Zero journalists because the bad ones like Wallin & Duffy proved just as corrupt and the good ones are too partisan.

Twitter.com/Gordon Bonenfant ‏

Just a second while I puke over your two examples (Christie Blatchford and Rex Murphy)

Twitter.com/Grant Bowen

‘If one were asked to serve …’

I actually tried, in the 1980s for public office. The good people of Newfoundland rejected me with a force and volume that was terribly impressive. I would not, ever again, so to speak, fly again in the face of that impeccable, implacable, infallible judgement. What Newfounadlanders have rejected let no man put in Parliament.

Rex Murphy

One would never be presumptuous but if one were asked to serve ….

John Ivison

I think I could be quite enthralling in the foreign affairs portfolio.

Shinan Govani

If allotted sufficient political power, I would impose anarchy just long enough for us to eat all the anarchists. It would probably not be Canada’s finest hour, but certainly its most ironic.

Tristin Hopper

My only political aspiration, and ’twas ever thus, is to exercise my democratic vote.

Christie Blatchford

I refuse to represent any electorate ignorant enough to elect me.

Kelly McParland

Candidates for high office are usually disqualified for being stupid enough to think they can do the job. What disqualifies me is being smart enough to know that I can’t.

George Jonas

If history has taught us anything, it’s that democracy doesn’t work. Which is why I intend to violently overthrow my ward’s public school trustee and bathe in the riches and power that will soon follow.

I could never be a politician. You have to be nice to people all the time. And they are allowed to berate you, but you are not allowed to say back to them: “You must be confusing me with someone who cares what you think.”

Barbara Kay

Unfortunately, I’m unelectable because of some stuff that happened when I was in second year undergrad. But if I lie low, no one’s going to find out about that. Right, Becky?

Jonathan Kay

Newspapers are a competitive business, and upward mobility can be difficult. That’s why, in my capacity as his second in command in the Comment section, it is my pleasure to nominate my boss, Jonathan Kay, for … anything, really. Prime minister, senator, premier, school trustee, bylaw officer, anything. Just, please, would someone get him out of my way?

There are times when I can’t read Christie Blatchford’s columns because they are filled with horrific and sad revelations of how five-year-old Jeffrey Baldwin died. But even more difficult than reading these articles, must be having to research and write them, as Ms. Blatchford has done. In a society where we should be acting humanely to prevent such horrors, there is no good reason why an inquest should be taking place 11 years after his death. Inquests such as this must be done in a speedy manner, so that further abuses can be prevented. How can we as a society go on with the knowledge that it takes 11 years to even start discussing what went wrong with a publicly funded organization, the Catholic Children’s Aid Society, that still operates today.

I shudder to think of how children involved with this group are being protected.

Is it not more than a wee bit ironic that three dimwitted firefighters can be fired over sexist tweets, and yet no one from the Catholic Children’s Aid Society has been held accountable for the heartbreaking and unspeakable cruelty Jeffrey Baldwin suffered at the hands of those they deemed fit to care for him.

Susan Borden, St. Thomas, Ont.

Jubilee Medal defended

This editorial regarding the awarding of the Diamond Jubilee Medal seems to miss the mark. This medal is a commemorative medal; it is not in the same class as the Order of Canada or the meritorious service awards, so the standard of “proof of merit” is not the same. It is meant to honour a wide variety of people from all walks of Canadian life for their contributions to our country. One can always quibble about why this or that person was so awarded while others were not, but with 60,000 medals being awarded, there was fair coverage among Canadian society.

To correct one point: All Canadian ambassadors or high commissioners were not automatically awarded the medal by virtue of their positions. I know not all were, as I was serving as a Canadian high commission in the jubilee year and I was not given the medal for that service.

David Collins, Victoria.

So, the distribution of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee seems bizarre, according to the Nation Post editorial board. So what else is new? This is how the commemorative medals have always been distributed. In reality, this system is no more bizarre than that used to determine who receives the nation’s highest decoration, the Order of Canada. While a committee decides which Canadian should receive the award, its deliberations are never made public, meaning the selection process for the Order is a joke. If you are a former politician or supporter of the latest left wing or liberal cause, you are assured recognition for your efforts. That is why the Order of Canada was given to David Suzuki and Henry Morgentaler, but not Don Cherry or, even worse, the late Peter Worthington.

Serving members of the Canadian Armed Forces are not eligible to receive the Order of Canada until they retire. If they do receive it then, it is usually for some sort of charity work, and not their military service.

However, I think the real reason for this editorial is sour grapes. I suspect that no one from the National Post’s editorial board received a Diamond Jubilee gong. Well, there is still Canada 150 anniversary medal to come — but don’t hold your breath.

Curt Shalapata, Oshawa, Ont.

This editorial rightly points out the utter sham regarding the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee medals. They were not bestowed — they were dispensed like gumballs out of a machine. However, this reflects today’s society, where there are awards just for showing up to work on time everyday. My late father was the recipient of two medals, the Queen’s Commendation for Brave Conduct for saving the life of a mentally challenged 16-year-old and the Star of Courage, after he diffused an extremely dangerous hostage situation. I think it’s safe to say that the standards have been lowered just a tad.

Steve Flanagan, Ottawa.

Economically, Quebec is just fine

Graeme Hamilton makes the point that the Quebec and Montreal economies are not particularly brilliant at the moment. But I would contest any notion that short-term political factors have proven, negative consequences here.

In fact, Quebec unemployment is basically stable after a jump in summer 2013 following an ill-timed construction strike, starting in June. Prior to that, the Statistics Canada labour-market report for May showed Quebec had produced 20,000 new jobs compared to Alberta’s 19,000 that month.

Even the briefest walk around downtown Montreal these days reveals a bubbling construction sector, as investment rebounds in the city’s new “downtown west.” Within a four-block walk of the Bell Centre there are a dozen new towers (totalling almost 350-storeys) being launched. In residential real estate, Montreal prices have bounced 20% in the most recent municipal assessments.

Bombardier Inc. has wheeled out its promising new airliner this week at Mirabel and the high-tech and resource sectors are recovering from recent weakness. If there is some special problem in Quebec’s economy, vis-à-vis Ontario or the rest of Canada, I certainly don’t see it in my daily commutes through construction-choked Montreal.

The impact of short-term headlines on Quebec’s economic growth is often overestimated. Caveat emptor.

David Winch, Montreal.

Balloon story 50 years late

This announcement is over 50 years too late. Atmospheric scientists from the Defence Research Board laboratory in Valcartier, Que., were launching stratospheric research balloons from Ancienne Lorette airport on a regular basis throughout the 1960s. The instrumentation carried aloft was used to study the stratospheric content of minor gases such as water vapour, methane and nitric oxide that could not readily be studied from ground level. The payloads, which weighed over 200 kg, returned to the surface by parachute and were usually recovered in the Eastern Townships and in Maine, but one eventually landed in the Atlantic and was never recovered.

More recently there have been infrequent stratospheric balloon flights from a launch site in Saskatchewan.

Bob Lowe, professor emeritus, University of Western Ontario, London, Ont.

Hating Jews & gays

Martin Gladstone focuses on the irrationality of those in the gay community who demonize Israel and ignore the mistreatment of gays in all other Middle Eastern countries. The answer to his question is that these gays are not naive or misguided but are anti-Semites and their hate, like for all other bigots and racists, trumps everything else. He feels the anti-Israel gay activist John Greyson was unjustly imprisoned in Egypt and seeks his release. The irony of the situation is that Mr. Greyson felt at home with the anti-Semitism in the countries of the Middle East. He fails to realize that although they hate Jews, they hate gays even more.

Harvey Kaplan, Thornhill, Ont.

Get back to teaching the basics

At last, math professors are fighting to restore sanity to the way grade-school children are taught mathematics. They cite the damage that the Western and Northern Canadian Protocol (WNCP) caused, and want to restore a back-to-basics approach. The WNCP replaced the teaching of elementary addition memorization, vertical addition, subtraction, carry, borrow, times table, with commerce type problem solving and doing research and innovation as a sign of Canadian sophistication. We ended up with people who can’t do a simple subtraction; totally dependent on a calculator.

If you’re asked to teach grade school kids to play chess and you decide to give them a research project to start with the game of checkers and invent a more sophisticated generalization, you would waste their time and yours rather than let them learn and enjoy the beauty of chess. If instead of teaching simple decimal addition you start by teaching general-radix addition, hexadecimal base-16 addition, you would claim a degree of sophistication, but you would have discouraged the kid, the teacher and the parent who know not what was this all about, and kids would have been put off math forever.

In all of Canada, to all those who have ears, let them hear: Go back to teaching the basics. Respect tradition.

Religious symbol ban makes sense

Perhaps the question in Quebec (and Canada) should be: Do we want governments, provided by the grace of all taxpayers, seemingly proselytizing via visible religious symbols? Should the consumer have to experience discomfort and be distracted by such conspicuous religious adornments? Where is the line between ‘church’ and state drawn? Does reverse discrimination and showing our multicultural tolerance become a sideshow when it imposes on and discomforts consumers of its required services? Should not governments be neutral institutions?

Symbols speak volumes and can be exclusionary and distancing. Schools, offices, and other government institutions are no place for religious show and tell. Crossing the thin line of separation between religion and government is in itself an act of discrimination — a very non-Canadian value. Our generous acceptance of such diverse populations of varying customs must not endanger the very reason many seek our shores. Religious customs and values are already protected and do not need to be on parade in taxpayer-supported institutions.

Mari Adams, Oakville, Ont.

Make religious symbols mandatory

I was just wondering if Quebec has it backwards. Wouldn’t it be better if it was compulsory for public servants to wear a symbol of their particular belief? Then you could instantly see what kind of person you were dealing with, and act accordingly.

Thank God for Nuns (II)

I was delighted to read letters praising nuns and their great works, in past and present times. I also loved the article written about Sister Jane Christmas.

I was 18 years old in Saigon, South Vietnam, when I sat in front of Mother Marie Zoila, the Superior Mother of the French Convent des Oiseaux, and told her of my wish to go and study in Belgium. She answered: “Pray to our Mother, Saint Mary. She will help you.” I went to the Notre Dame Cathedral of Saigon and prayed. During the following days, suddenly, one of my brothers said: “I shall finance your university studies in Europe.” President Ngo Dinh Diem who had signed a decree that year, forbidding people to leave a Vietnam at war, approved my exit visa to study at the Catholic University of Louvain.

I converted to the Roman Catholic faith in Louvain. During my studies in Louvain, I was fully immersed into lovely inspirations such as “The Story of a Nun” and “Sister Dominique.” It was how my wonderful beginnings in the Catholic faith began.

I agree with Sister Jane Christmas who said that when you talked about God, most people thought that you must be nuts. It is very discouraging but we should not get discouraged to believe and to stand up for our faith.

Alice Swann, Ottawa.

Salvaged wine sure to multiply

As an engineer, I admire the ingenious salvage operation of the Costa Concordia. I’m also impressed by the 18,000 bottle of wine to be recovered and looking forward to perhaps 25,000 of them appearing on the collectors’ market!

Roger Jones, Thornhill, Ont.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/todays-letters-lets-not-have-any-more-jeffrey-baldwins/feed/0stdjeffrey-2000.jpgToday's letters: Relax, there is no evidence of Canadian radicalizationhttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/todays-letters-5
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/todays-letters-5#commentsTue, 30 Apr 2013 05:00:56 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=114878

It is rare that the word “sociology” is part of public discourse and debate, and it is even rarer that a prime minister uses it in public. It is refreshing to hear about sociology, but Stephen Harper’s comments also show that sociology — as an academic discipline — needs to be better understood by the media and the wider public.

As a sociologist who has worked on terrorism and radicalization processes, I can only concur with the idea formulated by the Prime Minister about the dangers of linking specific terrorist incidents and larger sociological issues. The alleged terrorist plot thwarted by our security services a few days ago is just that — an alleged plot of a few to use violence for political purposes, and who may have had some support from outside Canada. Yet, it is unsound from a social sciences’ perspective to use local or tactical events and try to extrapolate them into sociological or strategic comments.

Sociology is concerned, primarily, with large groups’ dynamics, such as radicalization, not specific individual events such as specific terrorists’ actions. History has shown that there are individuals in Canada willing to commit acts of political violence from time-to-time, but it has not shown any significant signs of social-level radicalization processes.

Eric Ouellet, military sociologist, Toronto.

Which team will win the Cup? Send us a 75-word response by 6 p.m. EDT on May 2 at letters@nationalpost.com. Responses to be published on May 6.

Richard Kachkar didn’t premeditate his actions and directly personally target Sgt. Ryan Russell or his family. The Russell camp — in stark ironic contrast — are just exactly so responsible for their deliberate campaign not only against Mr. Kachkar but all those with mental illness.

Widow Christine Russell has vowed to seek changes to laws governing those found not criminally responsible, that would remove protection currently in place for those who are mentally ill (or otherwise cognitively impaired). Moreover she wishes that provisions be included to preclude release, if even the smallest possibility exists for a compromising relapse and subsequent danger to others.

There is no such guarantee even outside of cases involving mental illness. Moreover, ours is an inclusive society, that considers the well-being and rights of all of us. We do not operate as Spartans did and cull our less than ideal members, and we are thereby responsible collectively for them. What we gain is our humanity, which purportedly is of value above the foundation of our animal instincts.

The Russells are undeniably tragic victims here, but equally so is Mr. Kachkar. Ms. Russell should dedicate herself to understanding mental illness and realize the full true scope of this tragedy, so she can grieve not only the loss of her husband but her apparent notions of ordered control in this world for whom no one but apparently its creator is responsible for. Then perhaps she can move on in some semblance of peace not withstanding her loss.

Dr. Avery Hurtig, psychiatrist, Toronto.

The comments made by the Russell family speak to a lack of understanding and empathy for those with serious mental illness. There was no more volition, intent or freewill on the part of Richard Kachkar to kill Sgt. Russell than a truck driver who rams into a school bus killing 10 children because of a heart attack. The parents of those children will suffer, too, like the Russell family, but they will not blame the driver nor will they demand that he receive a jail sentence, or that he never be released.

The Russells needs to focus their outrage on the health-care and justice systems, as well as all the bystanders. He had exhibited odd behaviour days before the event. Did anyone call the police who could have taken Mr. Kachkar into the emergency room of any hospital? Did anyone call a 24-hour mental health crisis centre? Bystanders watched from a distance or turned their back or crossed the street to avoid him and his odd behaviour. Had he been in the midst of a heat attack, there would have been many heroes.

This gross misunderstanding of mental illness is one of the reasons so many keep their mental illness — or fear of having a mental illness — a secret. Who wants to face the possibility of dealing with the same contempt that the Russell family threw onto Mr. Kachkar.

What a telling letter you published on Saturday stating: “There are not two sides” in the case of the alleged gang rape of Rehtaeh Parsons. This letter sums the postmodern view that truth is what we want it to be, and moreover editors and journalists should be muzzled accordingly. Yet Ms. Blatchford has a way of penetrating the crust of that symbiotic relationship between political correctness and feminism. She still believes that the truth shall set us free.

Richard Smyth, West Vancouver, B.C.

Re: What Happened To Rehtaeh Parsons, editorial, April 27.

While it is completely understandable that people want justice for Rehtaeh Parsons, Christie Blatchford and the subsequent National Post editorial are correct. The justice system cannot be twisted to achieve immediate populist aims.

Ms Blatchford indicated there was not sufficient credible evidence to charge anyone. The police and Crown attorneys need more. That is how the system has to work. Or as English jurist William Blackstone one noted: “It is better that 10 guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”

Rex Murphy is correct in his opposition to a Toronto casino. Putting a casino in one’s city says two things. First, it admits that the city has been ignored by the world, yet Toronto has been long free of that complex. Second, a casino admits the city is in decline and in need of an economic boost whatever the social cost.

Toronto is neither in decline nor in need of a transfusion of false economy. In order to pay our way, we do not need to appeal to a gambler’s weakness, of hoping to win something for no effort. The real world does not operate in that way. Everything has its cost.

Toronto’s current upswing toward greatness is due to hard work, practical economics and reasonable management. A casino would evidence none of these.

Should writers earn a living? Should they get paid for their work? Of course to both quesitons. But should their grandchildren getting paid for the same work 40 years later? That’s the problem. Copyrights are out of control and last far too long. I know I’m not still getting paid for ideas I came up with 20 years ago, even if said work still benefits the organization.

I had a chuckle over Allan Levine’s comment that the American occupation of York in 1813 “was pretty tame.” They only ransacked every house they found deserted and burned down the Parliament buildings. Thank goodness they didn’t run amok.

Barack Obama is faced with a serious dilemma. Now that there is clear evidence that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is using chemical weapons against his own people, the U.S. President has to make good on his promise to act. It is not a question of deciding whether the Syrian regime has used “enough” chemical weapons to trigger an American response. It is a question of morality, and as the leader of the free world, Mr. Obama cannot afford to go back on his word

On the other hand, the Syrian revolt seems to be led by radical Islamist groups that the White House does not want to support. Mr. Obama is indeed stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Oro Anahory-Librowicz, Montreal.

There once was a time when Kipling’s, “thin red line of ’eroes” was a symbol of courageous determination for free people — and a petrifying fright for their enemies. Pity, but in the United States today a red line, it seems, is merely a display of sheepish impotence that frightens no one.

This type of tragedy could be avoided if we would promote or resuscitate local manufacturing of garments. American Apparel Inc., which began in Montreal, had that objective. It is now based in Los Angeles and all the garment manufacturing is down in-house. Garment workers are paid a fair wage without the coercion of a union. Its clothes are being sold in countries all over the world. Chasing the lowest production costs by exploiting workers in underdeveloped countries is immoral and not sustainable. The repeated tragic episodes in Bangladesh illustrate the immorality of this futile pursuit. In the end it comes down to the ethics of the principals involved running the companies with the popular brand labels.

Morris Charney, Montreal.

The instantaneous faux fury (directed toward the factory’s customers) and approximately $1.52 gets one a medium size coffee in this part of Ontario. Can anyone wait for additional relevant facts to be presented before assigning blame?

Judging by his columnist images, I’ll wager that Joe O’Connor is too young to have seen the NHL when it featured real hockey. That disappeared 40 years ago.

Today’s sideshow of swirling goons is devoid of stickhandling, clever passing and clean checking. Never mind the cowardly violence (too bad today’s bullies will never face Ted Lindsay, Lou Fontinato, Maurice Richard and Gordie Howe), the product is a bore.

If the terrorist sleeper cells in this country want to learn how easily Canadians be duped, they should monitor the upsweep of puerile, near-orgasmic excitement over the Leafs in the media and among the drells in the bars in the next few weeks.

As a Conservative party member and a supporter of the Harper government, I must admit that I am becoming increasingly disillusioned. From a budget process that claims to be fiscally conservative (it isn’t) to a truly stupid decision to cut the hazardous circumstance pay for members of the Canadian Armed Forces, this government is stumbling from one political pothole to the next.

The latest mind fart by the government is the decision to allow UN “Human Rights Rapporteurs” into the country to evaluate Canada’s human rights record. The Harper government should have boycotted the UN hearings and barred these rapporteurs from Canada until countries such as Cuba, Iran, China and North Korea are either expelled from the UN, or at least removed from the UN Committee on Human Rights.

If he hopes to be re-elected in 2015, Stephen Harper needs to clean house by bringing in some fresh blood into his cabinet (firing Peter MacKay would be a good start) and restore the word “conservative” to its original meaning. If he doesn’t shape up, I and many of my conservative brethren will be sitting on our hands during the next election.

There is something wonderfully humorous about Conrad Black citing William Lyon Mackenzie King’s “awkward prose” and “complicated syntax” in a sentence that is 60 words long. I’ve written entire letters to the editor — including this one — that were shorter.

On Nov. 24, 2010, the National Post had the acumen, sagacity and just plain old good taste to print one of my letters to the editor, wherein I wrote: “It took the great Ronald Reagan to finish what the great Harry Truman began; it will likewise take a future great president (certainly not the present one) to finish what the great G.W. Bush has begun.”

Well, you can imagine my glee when I happened upon Charles Krauthammer’s latest gem this weekend, in which he concluded: “Like Bush, Harry Truman left office widely scorned, largely because of the inconclusive war he left behind. In time, however, Korea came to be seen as but one battle in a much larger Cold War that Truman was instrumental in winning. He established the institutional and policy infrastructure (CIA, NATO, Truman Doctrine, etc.) that made possible ultimate victory almost a half-century later.

I suspect history will similarly see Mr. Bush as the man who, by trial and error but also with prescience and principle, established the structures that will take us through another long twilight struggle, and enable us to prevail,

Either great minds truly do think alike or Mr. Krauthammer’s been reading my mail; either way is OK by me!

Letter-writer Bob Erwin of Ottawa is spot on. The vast majority of hockey-loving Canadians never get to see the style of play that the Vancouver Canucks and the Sedin brothers exhibit, except in highlight reels, since their games are played three hours after bedtime for most Eastern Canadians.

I was fortunate to be watching Daniel Sedin’s latest jewel of a play on television, when Henrik Sedin’s bank passed to Daniel, who went on to score in truly exciting style. As I watched the play unfold, I literally moved to the edge of my seat. Duncan Keith’s attempted hatchet job on Daniel didn’t diminish the excitement, but it did draw into question the officiating.

Two years ago, Boston player Brad Marchand was allowed to pummel Daniel — unaccosted and unpenalized — all in the name of “playoff hockey.” And Vancouver was blamed for not having an enforcer warming the bench; how dare it attempt to compete for The Cup without a “physical” presence.

I realize this all sounds rather biased towards the Canucks, but understand being on the receiving end of cheap hits and goon tactics aren’t restricted to any one team — David Steckel’s Winter Classic headshot on Sidney Crosby was easily one of the more egregious of these events. I would argue the NHL and its treatment of skilled players is completely outdated. The rules are there; it’s time to enforce them.

Scott Hoffman, North Vancouver, B.C.

Way back when before the Olympics, Canada Cups, etc., I had no idea how good hockey could be without fighting. Now, I wonder what do fans, who still love hockey fights, see that I’m missing?

Barbara Kay condemns a child welfare system that she says lacks accountability and oversight and where removal of children from the home is the “norm.”

The fact is, last year Ontario’s Children’s Aid Societies received nearly 168,000 calls about possible abuse and neglect of children. Each call needed to be responded to in the best interest of the child concerned. In the vast majority of cases, families are being helped without their children coming into Children’s Aid care.

The modern Children’s Aid Society concerns itself first with supporting families. Everything that can be done to keep a family together – while ensuring that children are safe and thriving – is done. If there is no other alternative, a child will be placed in foster care, but only after extensive checks.

The plain fact is that keeping vulnerable children safe is not easy. There is no formula that works in every case. There is no path that leads, inevitably, to happy families. What we have, instead, is our determination to ensure that every child is safe. The people who work in our Children’s Aid Societies use their knowledge, their experience, their compassion and their commitment to preserve families wherever possible and to bring children into healthier situations when they can’t.

No, we don’t get it right every time but, if Ms. Kay had all of the information she would understand that, in fact, we almost always do.

As a physician and someone who has and continues to do street outreach work in Montreal and Vancouver with victims of sexual assault, I would strongly contend that it is the irresponsible decisions of editors and journalists to run vitriol such as this that perpetuates a rape culture. Let there be no mistake: Sexual Assaults are rooted in a misogyny that your publication of this article has condoned. Your own conscience should carry the weight of this poor woman’s too-soonly-ended life.

This woman, this poor girl, was raped. She was a victim. There are NOT two sides. Not just for the perpetrators, but for people who put articles like this to print.

Letter-writer Alex Sotto is excited about the recent legalization of gay marriage in France and makes reference to the French Revolution in praise of France being always ready “to uplift the poor and the downtrodden.” Granted, the Revolution led to “significant changes to the law,” but the Reign of Terror that followed saw more than just the guillotining of Marie Antoinette. It was a time of horrible bloodshed and wild pagan worship of the goddess of Reason — which made a mockery of all that is reasonable in this world.

Apparently, some in France are willing to worship that goddess again by denying the reasonable nature of marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Thank goodness the French are revolting once more, and this time against a “reign of error.”

If I understand this letter writer correctly, professional writers should give away their secondary rights because otherwise we sacrifice readership and therefore advertising revenue. Really? Have fun reading all the amateur blogs you want. And if they’re really great, perhaps the writer will earn a book contract deal but the book will be downloaded for free, because good content will pay for itself. No worries, the book will turn into a film but because of all the free downloads, there will be no money earned there. Still it will be good promotion for the blog, the free book and the next free movie.

I get a good cheque from Access Copyright once a year. But it’s not that income I’m worried about even though it pays my mortgage and groceries for a month. I’m worried about the kids in university (who want all the free content) not having a job when they graduate. Culture is something that’s hard to outsource to foreign countries and provides good jobs for university graduates whether researching, writing, editing, and/or any other type of creation in image, film or music. But these jobs are disappearing because good content does not magically attract income. Not unless the consumer pays for it.

Letter-writer Martin F. Van leperen not only agrees with Justin Trudeau’s philosophical response to imminent danger, but takes it further with a personal statement of penance. “Millions of people loathe (us),” he warns, because of our involvement in “recent disastrous wars in the Middle East” and the subsequent destabilization of the entire region.

I’m not sure what stability the writer refers to. Before the West’s recent involvement came eight years of Iran-Iraq’s mutual hammering, the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, the never-ending sectorial conflicts which repeatedly turned Beirut into a pile of rubble, and so on. The bubbling cauldron of conflict called the Middle East has been thus for at least two millennia. The hatred of the West which germinates there is a result of a movement to harness the energy within this cauldron for religious/political purposes.

Post-disaster soul-searching will only breed more contempt from people who already believe that we are weak-willed. Leaders who don’t lead, and guilt-ridden followers who are ready to surrender, will only entice them to further mayhem.

I had a chuckle over Allan Levine’s comment that the American occupation of York in 1813 “was pretty tame.” They only ransacked every house they found deserted and burned down the Parliament buildings. Thank goodness they didn’t run amok.

Rickart New, Oakville, Ont.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/todays-letters-the-folly-of-fisticuffs/feed/0stdcal0319-dh-4Christie Blatchford: Kachkar decision in no way 'getting away with it,' but verdicts have so little to do with griefhttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/christie-blatchford-kachkar-decision-in-no-way-getting-away-with-it-but-verdicts-have-so-little-to-do-with-grief
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/christie-blatchford-kachkar-decision-in-no-way-getting-away-with-it-but-verdicts-have-so-little-to-do-with-grief#commentsWed, 27 Mar 2013 23:57:02 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=110424

In the stirring language of the imperfect but noble beast that is the Canadian justice system, Richard Kachkar put himself upon his country.

It’s a phrase from jury selection, where an accused person is told to look at each of the faces of the people chosen as his judges and they at him.

The jurors are every accused’s country.

Wednesday, Mr. Kachkar’s found him not criminally responsible in the Jan. 12, 2011, death of Toronto Police Sergeant Ryan Russell because of the psychosis he suffered at the time.

While sometimes perceived as the equivalent of “getting away” with a crime, a finding of NCR means nothing of the sort and only rarely has that sort of effect.

Mr. Kachkar was not released, but remanded in custody until he appears before the Ontario Review Board, an independent tribunal appointed like others across Canada by each province, made up of psychiatrists, lawyers, judges and, the eternal saving grace, lay people.

The board will determine where he is hospitalized, and treated, and in annual reviews measure his progress.

It was a brave decision, if only because Sgt. Russell was a serving officer — indeed, a rising star — killed in the line of duty, and citizens are rightly grateful for all those who rush to danger in the service of others.

Early that January morning, Mr. Kachkar, who is now 46, had stolen a huge truck-cum-snow plow and gone on a rampage of property destruction and citizen intimidation in the central part of the city.

In the freezing, snowy pre-dawn, he wore no jacket and was barefoot.

Only because of the hour — the streets were still largely deserted as Mr. Kachkar, on a one-man demolition derby, sideswiped parked taxis and yelled bizarre and threatening things at the few folks he saw — no one had been hurt.

But the city was about to get busy, and Sgt. Russell would have known that when he got into his squad car to respond to the flurry of 911 calls coming in.

With his emergency lights flashing, he caught up to Mr. Kachkar, who did a U-turn and headed right at him.

The 35-year-old officer began to reverse.

Mr. Kachkar slowed down, almost to a stop, and opened the driver’s door.

He had done that several times already that morning, the better to yell at passersby, but to a police officer, it must have appeared awfully like the universal gesture of, “I give up.”

Sgt. Russell got out of his car, Mr. Kachkar slammed shut his door, and drove the 5,050-kg truck straight at the young officer.

Sgt. Russell began firing his gun as the vehicle bore down on him, but the blade of the plow knocked his legs out from under him, then fatally clipped his head.

He died shortly after at St. Michael’s Hospital, leaving behind his wife Christine, their baby son Nolan, then two years and 24 days old, and doting parents.

Sgt. Russell had conducted himself precisely as even the most critical citizen might want, especially with someone reportedly behaving as a crazy man: He had tried to avoid a confrontation, responded to what he thought was a sign Mr. Kachkar was giving up, and resorted to his weapon only when his life was in danger.

So while the jury’s decision was founded firmly on the evidence – no fewer than three top forensic psychiatrists, including the one hired by the Crown, testified that Mr. Kachkar was in the throes of a real psychosis at the time and should not be held criminally responsible – it was also unsettling for police and profoundly disappointing for Sgt. Russells family.

His widow, Christine, slumped in her seat as the jury forewoman delivered the verdict; it was the human equivalent of a balloon suddenly deflating.

After Ontario Superior Court Judge Ian MacDonnell thanked the jurors for their service and they filed out of the courtroom, Ms. Russell didn’t get to her feet as is the custom and as others did.

If it was a protest, and not a function of unsteadiness, it was a quiet one.

Later, she joined Sgt. Russell’s father, Glenn, in reading a victim impact statement, she on behalf of her young son, who has now lived longer without his beloved father than he did with him.

Because Mr. Kachkar’s formal “disposition hearing,” as it’s called, will be held at the review board within the next 45 days, allowing the impact statements to be delivered here was a kindness of the judge, and defence lawyer Bob Richardson.

The impact statements lived up their name: They were powerful and wrenching.

Mr. Russell, a retired Toronto officer himself, spoke of the last Christmas Eve dinner the family had with his only son. He looked about, he said, at all the people he loved, and thought to himself, “It doesn’t get any better than this.”

Nineteen days later, Ryan was dead.

Tracey Russell, Sgt. Russell’s big sister by 18 months, remembered the boy she spoke for before he could talk (perhaps for that reason, when he began speaking, it was in near-complete sentences).

After a false start, during which Christine Russell held out the little family’s last formal picture and said fiercely, looking directly at Mr. Kachkar, “Richard, I’d like you to look at that” before the judge stopped her and called a brief recess, the widow spoke on behalf of her son.

Nolan and his daddy were close; the young officer was a modern, hands-on father who dearly loved his little boy. She explained, she said, as delicately as she could, to the wee boy that his daddy had gone to heaven, but he was so young, that after the funeral, “He asked, ‘Where’s daddy?’”

Only after about nine months, she said, did Nolan really begin to grasp what had happened. Face in his pillow, he sobbed for his daddy and wailed the terrible fear common to all who have lost someone they love, “I don’t see him any more.”

The verdict will have one harsh effect upon Sgt. Russell’s family: To give voice to their young man, several of them, including Christine, will attend Mr. Kachkar’s yearly reviews. Put another way, just as a tender scab may be forming over the rawness of their hurt, the wound will be ripped open.

But the verdict doesn’t diminish the size of their loss, or Toronto’s. It never does. Whatever they are, verdicts have so little to do with grief. Justice is a dish always served, without fail, with a huge side of tears.

KINGSTON, Ont. — Sahar Shafia told her boyfriend’s aunt she believed her parents would kill her if they found out about her relationship with the young man from Honduras but she planned to tell them about it because she would love him “until death,” the murder trial of her parents and brother heard on Wednesday.

“She told me that her parents did not know about the relationship with Ricardo and the day that her parents knew about the relationship with Ricardo she would be a dead woman,” Erma Medina testified Wednesday.

They have pleaded not guilty to killing 17-year-old Sahar and two of her sisters, Zainab, 19, and Geeti, 13 and Shafia’s first wife, Rona Amir Mohammad, 52. The victims were found dead in a submerged car discovered June 30, 2009 in a shallow canal in Kingston, Ont.

Sahar secretly dated Angel Ricardo Ruano Sanchez, a young Montreal man, for the last four months she was alive. Sanchez testified the young lovers talked of moving to his native country, Honduras, and of marrying.

Sanchez testified they kept the relationship secret out of fear of the reaction of her family. He believed the family would not approve of the union between the Spanish-speaking Christian and the teenage Muslim girl whose family is from Afghanistan.

Sanchez lived with his aunt for a time and Sahar visited him there.

Medina last talked to Sahar in April 2009, she testified. She said Sahar told her she planned to tell her parents about Sanchez but she hoped to move to Honduras to marry him.

“They would get support and feel more secure in my country than in this country,” Medina testified, through a Spanish interpreter, as did Sanchez. She said Sanchez’s father and other relatives are in Honduras.

Medina was asked by prosecutor Gerard Laarhuis why Sahar would tell her parents about her boyfriend if she believed they would kill her.

“Because she loved Ricardo . . . and said that she would love (him) until death,” Medina replied.

Medina acknowledged, during questioning by defence lawyer Peter Kemp, who represents Mohammad Shafia, that she never learned from Sanchez or Sahar whether Sahar’s parents knew of the relationship.

Sanchez also testified that he saw unexplained bruises on Sahar’s arm and leg. He said that he did not believe her explanation that she had fallen and hurt herself.

“I said it didn’t look like a bruise from a fall,” Sanchez testified.

HandoutSahar Shafia

Sahar confided in teachers at her school in 2008 that she was being physically and emotionally abused by family members, jurors heard previously. The complaints prompted a call to a youth protection agency.

The first agency employee to hear Sahar’s complaints testified Wednesday that she spoke, in May 2008, to a terrified and suicidal young woman who said life at home was unbearable.

“She told me that she was extremely scared because . . . she was not allowed to share family information with outsiders and she was afraid of the repercussions,” Evelyn Benayoun testified. At the time, Benayoun was an intake worker for Batshaw, a child protection agency for anglophones in Montreal. She spoke to Sahar by telephone, after school officials called the agency.

“Sahar told me that she wanted to die because she was extremely sad,” Benayoun testified. “The whole home situation was unbearable for her.”

Sahar told the woman of physical abuse by her older brother Hamed, at the behest of her parents, and that she was emotionally rejected by her mother. Benayoun said Sahar told her that her mother would not speak to her and her siblings were forbidden to talk to her, as punishment for having introduced a sister to a boy.

“She said, ‘I want my mother to speak to me,’” Benayoun testified.

She coded the case as an emergency requiring immediate action.

Jurors already have heard that a Batshaw investigator met with Sahar and concluded that the allegations were true but the file was closed and no action was taken because Sahar was not considered to be in immediate danger.

The trial is adjourned until Monday, when Crown prosecutors will call their final witness, a professor at the University of Toronto who has studied honour killings. It is not known if defence lawyers will call any evidence after the Crown completes its case.

Prosecutors allege the victims were slain in an honour killing, purportedly orchestrated by Shafia because he believed his daughters had shamed him by taking boyfriends and dressing in revealing clothing.

Prosecutors claim that Shafia’s first wife was killed because she was a source of friction in the family and she could expose Shafia’s polygamy.

KINGSTON, Ont. — Three teachers at a Montreal high school saw troubling signs that Sahar Shafia, one of three teenaged sisters allegedly murdered by her family, was a victim of physical and psychological abuse at home, a murder trial has heard.

The teachers from Antoine-de Saint-Exupery school in Montreal testified in succession Thursday, offering a catalogue of complaints that they said they heard from Sahar claiming violence and torment at the hands of family members, particularly her older brother and father.

Teacher Antonella Enea said Sahar confided that she was injured by scissors in an incident with her brother, Hamed, and that she feared her father.

Sahar, 17, and sisters Geeti, 13, and Zainab, 19, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, were found dead inside a car found submerged in a canal in Kingston on June 30, 2009. Rona was Montreal businessman Mohammad Shafia’s first wife, whom he married in his native Afghanistan, before moving to Canada in 2007.

Three weeks after the victims were found, Shafia, 58, his wife, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 41, and their son, Hamed, 20, were arrested and each charged with four counts of first-degree murder. They have pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors allege it was an honour killing, orchestrated by Shafia because he believed his daughters had shamed him and his family by dressing in revealing clothes and consorting with boys.

Deslauriers, who taught three Shafia children, recounted a meeting with Yahya in which the mother seemed “really angry” and was asking if the teacher knew whether Sahar had a boyfriend who she had kissed.

“I recall her saying that it was something that was against her values,” Deslauriers replied, during questioning by defence lawyer David Crowe, who represents Yahya.

The teacher lied and said no, though she had been told by Sahar that she had a boyfriend.

“I didn’t want Sahar to encounter any problems following our meeting,” she testified. Deslauriers said Sahar had never complained to her about problems with her parents, but she had heard this from Enea, who also attended the meeting with Sahar’s mother. Deslauriers said when she asked Sahar who caused the injuries on her arms, she did not get an answer.

Enea said Sahar told her about problems at home.

“She said she couldn’t have a normal life, the normal life of a young girl,” Enea testified. Sahar told her she couldn’t see friends of her choosing and could not go out of the home.

The teacher offered to help but Sahar declined.

“She said, ‘There’s nothing to be done,’ that was just the state of affairs at the house and nothing could be changed,” she testified.

In June 2009, Sahar also told Enea that she feared violence at home.

“She said that she was afraid of the father,” Enea testified. The teacher said Sahar told her that her father was returning to Canada from a business trip abroad and she feared one of her siblings who attended the same school was going to tell him that Sahar was a “whore.”

Boualia recounted an incident when Sahar fainted in class in May 2009. Boualia spent hours at the hospital with the girl because her parents could not be reached. None of her family members came to the hospital.

Boualia said she was told later by Sahar that she believed a sibling had told her mother not to go to the hospital.

Sahar did not tell the teacher who was trying to come between her and her family members. Sahar asked Boualia, who was a Muslim woman with a teenaged daughter, to speak to Yahya, Boualia said.

“Sahar is a girl who liked life, she wished to be free,” Boualia testified.

The complaints from Sahar to the teachers, in 2008 and 2009, that she had been abused, led to two calls to youth protection agencies. In at least one case, an investigator concluded the allegations were true but the case was closed and no action taken because of the finding that the girl was not in immediate danger, jurors heard earlier this week.

Benjamin, the social worker, testified Thursday a school psychologist told her Sahar feared being beaten by her father when he returned to Canada from a trip. Benjamin, who met Sahar twice in early June 2009, asked Sahar if she still feared violence at home.

Sahar told her that she wasn’t afraid any longer because her parents were separated and her father was living in a motel.

Defence lawyer Peter Kemp asked Benjamin if she knew that Sahar’s father was still out of the country in early June 2009 and there was no evidence he had ever been separated from Sahar’s mother.

“I believed what she told me,” Benjamin responded.

Benjamin said that when she met Sahar on June 9, the girl talked of wanting to get a job and saving money so that she could move out of the family home to her own place. She told the social worker she had a good relationship with her mother. Benjamin gave Sahar job leads and asked her to check back with her. She did not speak to her again.

KINGSTON, Ont. — In the weeks before they were found dead in a submerged car, two teenaged Montreal sisters told teachers and a youth protection worker that they were physically and psychologically abused at home and feared their father and older brother, a murder trial heard Wednesday.

In one case, a worker from the Batshaw agency concluded, after an investigation in early May 2009, that 17-year-old Sahar Shafia had been abused by her brother and had attempted suicide.

“She said her brother hit her on two occasions, but on one occasion not hard,” retired Batshaw investigator Jeanne Rowe testified Wednesday morning. The girl also confessed to taking pills.

“She said, ‘I didn’t want to kill myself, just sad and slept it off,’ ” Rowe said. The worker closed the file after marking it “founded” but took no action because the girl asked to return home to her family.

“The child was not at risk at the time and she wanted to go home,” Rowe testified.

Related

Rowe said Sahar told her that her brother hit her arm once and another time, shoved scissors across a table at her, causing scratches on her hand.

Sahar and her sisters, Zainab, 19, and Geeti, 13, and Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, were found dead in a sunken car on June 30, 2009. Three weeks later, police arrested Mohammad Shafia, 58, his wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 41, and their son, Hamed, 20, and charged each with four counts of first-degree murder. They have pleaded not guilty.

Rona was Shafia’s first wife, whom he married in his native Afghanistan. He brought his two wives and seven children to Canada in 2007 and settled in Montreal.

Geeti was failing all of her classes, was acting out and was absent dozens of days, according to Nathalie Laramie, a vice-principal at the time at Antoine-de Saint-Exupery high school. She said Sahar also missed many days of school.

On May 11, Laramie met over the lunch hour with Geeti because she had been expelled from class for being impolite to a teacher.

“It was a hard lunch hour,” Laramie testified, pausing to hold back her emotions. She said she and a teacher spent an hour and 15 minutes listening to Geeti complain about life at home, while crying.

“Geeti was asking to get out of the house,” Laramie testified. “I was crying, I was speechless.”

Laramie’s meeting with Geeti came two days after Rowe met with Sahar for the second time to talk about the allegations of abuse.

The first time she met with her, on May 7, Sahar denied the allegations.

“She was obviously extremely scared . . . she was crying profusely,” Rowe testified. The worker explained her role in investigating the allegations and explained that she would also have to speak to Sahar’s parents.

“Before I could even get to meet with her properly, she said, ‘I don’t want you to meet my parents,’ ” Rowe testified. “She was very, very scared about her parents knowing about the report.”

Sahar’s parents and her older sister, Zainab, and older brother, Hamed, arrived at the school. Rowe met with each of them individually and asked them to respond to the allegations. She said all of the family members denied that there was any physical violence in the home or that Sahar was being alienated.

Sahar had told a teacher that her parents had not spoken to her for months and she was being pressured to wear a hijab, a traditional Muslim head covering, and she was being forced to stay out of school.

Rowe said Hamed denied assaulting Sahar but said he couldn’t understand why she didn’t want to wear a hijab since it was part of their custom.

Rowe said Mohammad Shafia was very angry. He demanded to know the source of the allegations and when Rowe told him that the information was confidential, he said he would speak to a lawyer because it was “all lies.”

Rowe said that while Sahar changed her story during the second meeting and admitted that some of the allegations were true, she “minimized the situation.” Sahar told Rowe that things were better at home. Rowe noted that, unlike the first meeting, Sahar was wearing a hijab.

Laramie said Sahar often came to school dressed modestly, then changed into other clothes and put on makeup and jewelry. She changed again before returning home at the end of the day. Laramie testified that she had to send Geeti home once because she was wearing an inappropriate, revealing sweater.

Two other Shafia children attended the same school. Sahar told Laramie that she and Geeti had to be careful what they said and did at school.

“She said, ‘My sister and I are afraid in the house when my father is there. We know that when we are at school we have to be careful because our behaviour is reported back to home,’ ” Laramie testified.

Laramie said that she spoke to the girls’ mother about their absences from school. The mother asked her for advice to motivate the girls to go to school.

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Shafia sisters Zainab, 19; Sahar, 17 and Geeti, 13, and Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, were found dead in a Nissan Sentra submerged in a canal in Kingston on June 30, 2009. Rona was Shafia’s first wife, whom he married in Afghanistan.

Shafia, 58, his wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 41, and their son Hamed, 20, are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder.

They have pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors allege the victims died in an honour killing. The witness is a relative of Yahya.

HandoutZainab Shafia

The witness said he was trying to help the Shafia family sort out a problem with Zainab, who wanted to marry a young Pakistani man.

He had a telephone conversation with Shafia, he said, while Shafia was in Dubai on business, to talk about Zainab’s decision to marry the Pakistani man. Shafia said his daughter “wanted to dishonour me” and he called her a “whore,” the man testified.

“She is a dirty curse to me,” the man said, quoting Shafia.

The man said he spoke to Zainab about her impulsive decision to marry and she said she was constantly mistreated and belittled at home by her father.

“The only reason that I’m marrying is to get the revenge (for) the cruelty I suffer (from) my father,” the witness said, repeating what he claimed Zainab told him.

Earlier this week, a brother of Yahya testified that Shafia tried to recruit him to help drown Zainab.

KINGSTON, Ont. — The man who said Mohammad Shafia tried to recruit him to help murder a daughter said he can’t produce any phone records to back his claim and he doesn’t know exactly when the call happened.

He appeared Tuesday as a prosecution witness in the case against Yahya, her husband Mohammad Shafia, 58, and their son Hamed, 20. The Montreal residents each are charged with four counts of first-degree murder. They have pleaded not guilty to killing three Shafia sisters and Shafia’s first wife.

The victims were found dead in a submerged car in the Rideau Canal in Kingston more than two years ago.

Javid testified Wednesday that he spoke to Shafia on the telephone in late May or early June, while Shafia was in Dubai on business. He had hoped to intervene in a family problem with daughter Zainab, who had run away from home and wanted to marry a young Pakistani man, against everyone’s advice.

Javid said Shafia immediately asked Javid to invite Zainab, her mother and another sibling to Sweden where they could go to a body of water and have a barbecue and then throw Zainab in the water and drown her.

Crowe asked Javid why he said, during testimony at a preliminary inquiry, that the phone call was in early May.

“I might have been mixed up,” he said.

Javid said he was at work in his pizza shop in the Swedish city of Oxelosund when he had the phone conversation in which Shafia exhorted him to help in his murder plot. He said he used a phone card to make the call and his phone service provider said it was unable to provide any record of the call.

Javid said he was so upset by what Shafia said that he had to see a psychologist for counseling. After the Shafia call, he spoke to Zainab but didn’t tell her about the plot.

“You believed [Zainab] was in danger of being killed by her father?” asked defence lawyer Patrick McCann, who represents Hamed.

“Yes,” Javid replied.

“You spoke to her directly on the phone after hearing about the plan and you didn’t say a word to her about it?” McCann wondered.

“No,” Javid replied.

He said he called his sister and a brother who lives in Montreal about the scheme.

After Javid’s testimony, jurors began watching a videotape of an interrogation of Shafia by an RCMP officer.

Early in the tape, Shafia refers to his children as “liars” but he denies that he killed them. Court adjourned for lunch after jurors had seen only a few minutes of the interrogation.

Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17 and Geeti Shafia, 13, and Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, were found dead in a sunken car in June 2009. Rona was Shafia’s first wife, whom he married in Afghanistan.

Prosecutors allege the crime was an honour killing, orchestrated because the father believed his daughters had shamed the family by taking boyfriends and dressing in revealing clothes.

KINGSTON, Ont. — A Montreal woman accused, along with her husband and son, of killing her three daughters and her husband’s first wife did not confess to the crimes during a gruelling, six-hour interrogation.

On Tuesday morning, jurors watched the final hour of the videotaped interview of Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 41.

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Mehdizadeh is an RCMP officer who was brought in to help Kingston police in their investigation of the deaths because he speaks Yahya’s native language.

Lars Hagberg for Postmedia NewsMohammad Shafia

Yahya, Shafia, and their son, Hamed, 20, are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder. They have pleaded not guilty.

Their murder trial was abruptly halted last week, in the midst of the playing of the video, when Shafia was hospitalized. He underwent a surgical procedure at a Kingston hospital and the trial resumed Tuesday.

The bodies of Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti Shafia, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, were found inside a car that was discovered on June 30, 2009, at the bottom of a shallow canal in Kingston. The accused were arrested three weeks later.

Yahya offered what seemed to be incriminating statements at various times, telling the officer that she and her two co-accused were at the isolated spot where the victims were found early on the morning of June 30. The family had said previously that they didn’t know what happened to the victims and speculated they died in a joyride that ended tragically.

Near the end of the interrogation, Yahya backtracked, saying she had not eaten or slept in the past day.

“I can’t talk with you any more,” she said. “I have become confused. I don’t know what I am saying.”

HandoutSahar

Yahya told the officer not to tell her husband what she had told him but wouldn’t explain why she asked this.

“It may (have) happened or may not had happened,” she told Mehdizadeh. “It could have been just my imagination.”

Yahya earlier told the policeman that she was at the canal and heard the sound of the car going into the water. She said she became hysterical and passed out.

The interrogator pressed her, relentlessly accusing her of lying.

“Some of (my answers) have been lie,” she said, according to a transcript of the interview.

Yahya said she was scared, but would not say why.

The interrogation video also offered insight into the police theory that the victims were somehow incapacitated, perhaps with poison, before the car was pushed into the canal.

Yahya said she didn’t know anything when the officer suggested the victims could not have been awake when the car plunged into the water.

“Have you killed them?” Mehdizadeh asked.

“No,” Yahya replied.

“Hamed has killed them?”

“No,” she answered.

“Shafia has killed them?”

“No, I don’t know,” Yahya said.

Jurors will also see a videotape of the same officer interrogating Shafia.

KINGSTON, Ontario — A Montreal woman accused of killing her three teenage daughters sobbed uncontrollably during a police interrogation after her arrest and she wept in court Wednesday as she watched a video of the interview played for jurors.

Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 41, her husband Mohammad Shafia, 58, and their son Hamed, 20, are each on trial on four counts of first-degree murder.

The three, who have pleaded not guilty, were arrested in Montreal on July 22, 2009, three weeks after three Shafia sisters and Shafia’s first wife were found dead in a submerged car.

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That day, the accused mother was interrogated for six hours at the Kingston Police station.

Alex Tavshunsky for Postmedia NewsMohammad Shafia, left, his wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, and their son Hamed Shafia in court on Oct. 20, 2011.

Const. Azadeh Sadeghi, the first of two police officers to question her in a small interview room, put a photo album of her children in front of her. Tooba began to cry big wracking sobs as she leafed through the album. At one point, she clutched the album to her face.

“I haven’t killed (them) and I don’t want to talk,” she said, when asked if she murdered her family members. “I haven’t killed …”

“If you try to be honest and start, you know, talking to me, open your heart,” the officer responded.

“I don’t have anything in my heart except the grief of my children; I don’t have anything else.”

When the officer left the room for a few minutes, the accused mother continued to weep and muttered several times: “Oh my God.”

As her videotaped sobs filled the courtroom, her husband also began to cry in the prisoner’s box. Shafia held his hand to his eyes and turned his head, as if he could not bear to watch the video, played in the courtroom on three large video monitors.

Hamed Shafia showed no visible emotion. He stared down at a binder in his lap which contained a 215-page transcript of his mother’s videotaped interview.

Tooba wept in the prisoner’s box, holding a tissue over her eyes and part of her face.

HandoutZainab Shafia

She was interviewed by two police officers who speak Farsi, a version of her native language, Dari. The entire interrogation was conducted in Farsi. The video played in court featured English subtitles. Jurors also had a transcript.

A little more than an hour into the interview, the second officer, Insp. Shahin Mehdizadeh, takes over. The veteran Mountie is a trained interrogator and major crime investigator from British Columbia whose first language is Farsi.

The bodies of Zainab, 19; Sahar, 17, and Geeti Shafia, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, were found inside a car that was discovered on June 30, 2009, at the bottom of a shallow canal in Kingston. Rona was Shafia’s first wife, whom he married in his native Afghanistan.

Prosecutors allege the victims died in an honour killing staged to look like a car crash.

Jurors have been told Shafia was enraged his daughters had shamed him by consorting with boys and dressing in revealing Western clothes. They also have been told Tooba had sought to cut Rona off from Shafia and spoke dismissively of Rona’s role in the family.

KINGSTON, Ont. — Confronted by a police officer with the suggestion that the deaths of her three daughters and another family member were not an accident, Tooba Mohammad Yahya appeared devoid of emotion.

“Meaning what?” she responded, through an interpreter, in an interview recorded just hours after police had told her that four bodies had been found in a submerged car in the Rideau Canal on June 30, 2009.

The bodies of Zainab Shafia, 19, Sahar Shafia, 17, and Geeti Shafia, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, were found inside a sunken Nissan Sentra. Mohammad was the first wife of co-accused Mohammad Shafia, 58. The family, from Afghanistan, moved to Canada in 2007.

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Shafia took a second wife when the first marriage failed to produce children, court heard earlier.

“It would mean that something happened to cause it,” Det. Const. Geoff Dempster said in the video played to jurors in Ontario Superior Court Tuesday morning at the trial of Yahya, Shafia and their son Hamed, 20.

HandoutSahar

They are accused of murdering the four family members in an honour killing after they had stopped at a hotel in Kingston on their way back to Montreal from a vacation in Niagara Falls, Ont. They were travelling in two cars — the Sentra and a Lexus.

The trio was interviewed by police as officers struggled to understand how the car and the four victims wound up in the canal.

Dempster pressed the woman, telling Yahya that he believed that the family was not being truthful.

“I can’t say something that I don’t know; I can’t tell a lie,” she said, near the end of a calm, hour-long interview.

The mother speculated that her eldest daughter Zainab took the family car for a joyride, without permission because she wanted to drive, though she had no licence.

The trio had appeared at the police station around 12:30 p.m. on June 30 and reported that four family members and the Sentra were missing. Before they were interviewed by officers, they were told that the sunken car had been found and the family members likely were dead inside it. In their interviews, the three told slight variations on the same story.

HandoutGeeti

They said that the 10-member family was driving home to Montreal from a vacation in Niagara Falls and decided to stop in Kingston because they were tired. They checked into two rooms at around 1 a.m. Hamed left immediately to drive home to Montreal, while the eldest daughter asked for the keys to the Sentra, ostensibly to retrieve clothes.

In the morning, the Sentra and four family members were missing.

Dempster asked the mother if she were at the isolated canal property when the car plunged into the water.

“No, no, I wasn’t there,” she replied.

She said she did not see her daughter drive off after giving her the car keys.

“If I knew (what happened) I would tell you everything,” she said. “I just know that she took the keys from me and . . . I was very tired and I went to bed.”

Jurors also watched Dempster press Hamed Shafia to explain his decision to drive back to Montreal alone at 2 a.m. after the family had just arrived in Kingston from a long evening of driving.

The young man said he had business to do and he wanted to retrieve a laptop from the family home.

In the second interview, Dempster confronted him about hiding an accident he reported to Montreal police around 8 a.m. that morning. Shafia called police to report a collision with a guardrail in a parking lot just blocks from the family’s home.

Prosecutors allege that Hamed staged the collision in Montreal to conceal damage to the Lexus that it suffered when it was used to push the Sentra into the canal. Police found the Lexus in the family’s garage on July 1, with damage to its front driver’s side corner.

Hamed told Dempster that after he drove to Montreal that morning, he got a call from his father to tell him about the missing family members so he drove back to Kingston in the family’s minivan.

He said he took it because it was better on gas.

Dempster told Hamed he didn’t believe he was telling him the whole story.

KINGSTON, Ont. — In the weeks before four Montreal residents were found dead in a submerged car, a computer in their home was used to search the Internet for documentaries about murders, “where to commit a murder” and for information about bodies of water and boat rentals.

A Kingston police officer who is a forensic electronics expert found a data trail on the laptop, partly by digging through areas of the computer’s memory where deleted files would be hiding, he testified Thursday at the murder trial of Mohammad Shafia, 58, his wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 41, and their son Hamed, 20.

Const. Derek Frawley told jurors that he found information related to 278,000 websites, though users of the laptop might have thought they deleted evidence of the searches.

“The information is still sitting there. Only the first byte changed,” Frawley testified.

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On June 30, 2009, sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti Shafia, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, were found dead in a sunken car in the Rideau Canal in Kingston, near a series of locks. Rona was Mohammad Shafia’s first wife, whom he married when the family still lived in Afghanistan. They moved to Canada in 2007.

The accused, who have pleaded not guilty, are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder. They have claimed publicly that the victims died in a joyride that ended in a tragic accident when their eldest daughter drove the car into the canal.

Frawley’s analysis of the laptop, seized from the Shafia home, documented dozens of searches in June 2009 that included visits by the computer user to online photos of lakes, rivers and bridges. Dozens of the photos were flashed on large monitors in the courtroom for jurors to see as the officer testified.

There were many visits to scenic locations, including websites reached after searches for “mountains on water in Quebec.”

Frawley said that during June 2009, the laptop’s user made thousands of visits to websites after Google map searches — including one notable location on June 15.

“The map just happened to be centred on Middle Road and 401 here in Kingston, which is right by the locks area,” Frawley testified.

Jurors now have a better understanding of the complex geography of the spot where the car was found.

On Thursday they were ferried by bus to the canal, about 10 kilometres north of the courthouse, along with the judge, lawyers and court staff, in a rare procedure known as “taking a view.”

Despite a biting wind, the 12 jurors, dressed in ski jackets and toques, appeared curious and interested in examining all of the key areas around the property. One male juror seemed particularly animated. He gestured toward the water with one arm, and then pointed back toward the four locks south of the spot.

Shafia and his son Hamed sat in an unmarked police minivan adjacent to the property, at a spot where they could see the jurors. They did not get out of the vehicle. The accused mother refused to make the trip to the canal.

After the morning outing, the jurors heard Frawley’s testimony.

He also found evidence of searches for “metal boxes in Montreal,” “iron boxes,” “treasure boxes,” and “huge boxes in Montreal.”

Frawley said the searches were conducted in English with few mistakes. Shafia and his wife speak only broken English. Hamed is fluent in English.

Frawley also recovered several text files, including one that included a phone number traced to a gynecologist’s office and a description of antifreeze, or ethylene glycol. Another text file listed the web address of a Montreal business, Dante Sports, which describes itself as the city’s most experienced gun shop.

Frawley also found evidence of several Google searches on June 3 beginning with “can a prisoner have control over his real estate.” The words were altered just slightly in two more searches done shortly after the first one.

Frawley said the Windows operating system on the laptop was registered to M. Shafia.

KINGSTON, Ont. — The Shafia family SUV was used to push the family’s Nissan Sentra into a shallow canal, with four people inside, an expert collision reconstructionist told a murder trial this morning.

“There was certain damage present on the Nissan and there was certain damage present on the Lexus SUV that coincide and it’s my opinion that the Lexus was used to push the Nissan over the edge of the canal into the water,” Const. Chris Prent testified.

Prent is a veteran collision reconstructionist with the Ontario Provincial Police. He was asked by Kingston police to help reconstruct the incident that saw three teenage Montreal sisters and their stepmother end up dead inside a submerged car.

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Prent said the settings he saw inside the Nissan were “unusual” and suggested to him that it did not drive into the canal on its own power.

The car’s ignition was off, the headlights were off, the transmission was in first gear and all of the four occupants were not wearing seatbelts when they were found underwater on June 30, 2009. The car was found in about three metres of water next to the stone ledge of the Rideau Canal. The car’s nose was pointed toward the wall, as if it had gone into the water backward.

Prent testified that he believes the Sentra was stuck at the lip of the canal and when it was pushed from behind at its left corner, it began to rotate.

The bodies of Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti Shafia, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, were found inside the car.

The parents of the girls, Montreal businessman Mohammad Shafia, 58, his wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 41, and their son Hamed, 20, are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder. They have pleaded not guilty. They have claimed that the victims died in a joyride that ended in a tragic accident.

The incident happened July 21 in a Newmarket court north of Toronto, when the judge, apparently furious that an assistant Crown attorney wasn’t at his post, waited less than four minutes for him to show up, then dismissed the dozen cases before him for “want of prosecution.”

The Crown, Brian McCallion, was in his office reading a psychiatric report related to one of those cases. The public address system is audible only in courtroom halls.

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All the accused people had either pleaded guilty already — and were awaiting sentencing — or were intending to do so. They were facing, or convicted, of charges ranging from impaired driving and robbery to domestic abuse and fraud.

Judge Chisvin, who was appointed to the bench in 2004 by then-Ontario Attorney-General Michael Bryant, spent 18 years as a defence lawyer.

The judicial council’s complaints process is complex; a document on the OJC website explaining it is 32 pages long.

All complaints are first reviewed by a subcommittee, which can dismiss them, refer them to either the chief justice or a mediator, or send them to the full council for a hearing if the committee believes the evidence could support a finding of judicial misconduct.

According to the most recent information on the website, the OJC held only one hearing in 2007, four in 2006, and three in 2004. In its last annual report, filed in 2008-09, the council received 47 complaints about judges, none of which seems to have gone to a hearing.

If the hearing results in a finding of misconduct, punishment ranges from a warning, through reprimand and a recommendation for treatment or further education to suspension, with or without pay but only for 30 days, or removal.

Ontario Court judges earn about $250,000 a year.

Mr. Crawley said that a number of the cases Judge Chisvin dismissed already have been brought back to court before other judges, while other matters have been adjourned.

I’m no courtroom rookie, but Howard Chisvin’s conduct this week shocked even me.

The Ontario Court judge, who works in Newmarket, north of Toronto, tossed an entire docket’s worth of guilty pleas — a dozen of them — one morning in what looked for all the world to have been a hissy fit.

And he did it for a reason that, in his milieu or “culture,” as it is now called, borders on madness — because a prosecutor was a few minutes late returning to the courtroom.

As a timed transcript of the bizarre proceeding reveals, at 11:23:11 Thursday morning, the judge called for a recess of 20 minutes. When he came back in at 11:45:21 — two minutes late himself — assistant Crown attorney Bruce McCallion wasn’t at his post.

The clerk immediately paged him.

As she was doing this, Judge Chisvin told her to get the senior prosecutor there. She called the Crown’s office, spoke to a receptionist, who informed her the senior Crown was out of the office.

“Tell them they have 30 seconds,” Judge Chisvin snapped. “The list is about to go for want of prosecution.”

The clerk explained that the head Crown wasn’t there and that the receptionist was dispatching someone — and kept on paging Mr. McCallion herself.

As it happens, he was in his office, out of hearing range of the public address system, and was reading a forensic psychiatric report on a mentally ill prisoner whose case was slated to be before the judge that day.

Said the judge, of the receptionist’s reported efforts to locate a prosecutor, “It’s not her function to A) call the Crown’s office; B) the list is about to go for want of prosecution.”

A defence lawyer then offered to “walk across to see what’s going on.”

“Thirty seconds,” the judge told her. “That’s all.”

At 11:47 a.m. he announced, “All right, all provincial matters are dismissed for want of prosecution.”

He had waited all of 3.93 minutes for the prosecutor before calling it quits and setting free 12 people, all of whom had either already pleaded guilty to their charges (and now remain unsentenced, as a lawyer friend notes) or were intending to do so.

Among them is a disbarred lawyer named Jorden Kolman, convicted in 2000 for a whopping fraud ($1.2-million from 21 clients over about three years), who was facing fraud charges again.

Other cases either left unsentenced or outright released include a robbery, a domestic abuse (plus two counts of breach of court orders), the usual array of thefts and other breaches, several cases of impaired driving or failing to take a Breathalyzer or provide a sample — oh, and the mentally ill man whose psychiatric report Mr. McCallion was reading when Judge Chisvin blew a gasket.

Now, despite an excellent letter elsewhere in the National Post today from an excellent judge named Marvin Zuker saying that at his courthouse judges are never late, I can only say he and it are the exception.

I’ve been in plenty of courtrooms where judges are late and where just about everyone else in the joint is too.

The most outrageous example may have been Ontario Court Justice Eleonor Schnall, who in May of 2002 was in St. Thomas, Ont., presiding over an infamous child-protection hearing known as the “spanking case.”

While she regularly lambasted other participants for wasting time, Judge Schnall herself was one of the worst offenders: she was once 40 minutes late arriving with no explanation and another day was in the courtroom for only 35 minutes before taking the lunch recess, after which she returned by her reckoning smartly on time — that is, only 10 minutes late.

That was “judge time,” as it’s known across the land, at its worst, but she is hardly alone. Ask almost any court reporter or official.

I’ve covered the criminal courts, on and off but mostly on, for a long time, in at least five provinces, and at virtually every level. Trust me, the only place where clocks are regarded with more amusement, and where management is less concerned about their accuracy, is Vegas. And the reason is the same — time matters in neither place, and the powers-that-be like it that way.

All that said, it wasn’t his accounting for his time that is the concern with Judge Chisvin but, rather more importantly, his curious decision.

Who tosses out a sheaf of guilty pleas because of a four-minute-long wait, especially in a place where delay, lateness, stalling et al. are absolutely the norm? And what the heck is “want of prosecution” anyway? The only mention I can find in the Criminal Code of Canada refers to an appeal court, which may dismiss a case if the appeal has been abandoned.

The question is, what motivated Judge Chisvin: Was he merely having a bad day? Does he have some sort of bone to pick with the police and prosecution side (as some of his reported decisions might suggest; in eight cases I read, he almost always had sharp words for law enforcement) or with this particular prosecutor? Or does he have a case of judge-itis, wherein after years of having a captive audience that treats his every remark as a bon mot worthy of thigh-slapping, and of automatic deference and $250,000 a year, has he simply grown too big for his britches?

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/christie-blatchford-judges-hissy-fit-has-no-place-in-our-courtrooms/feed/0stdJudge Howard Chisvin waited all of 3.93 minutes for the prosecutor before calling it quits and setting free 12 people, all of whom had either already pleaded guilty to their charges (and now remain unsentenced, as a lawyer friend notes) or were intending to do so.Settlement reached in Caledonia class action suithttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/settlement-reached-in-caledonia-class-action-suit
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/settlement-reached-in-caledonia-class-action-suit#commentsFri, 08 Jul 2011 16:17:17 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=76998

Beleaguered homeowners and businesses in Caledonia finally have won some compensation for the often-violent native occupation in their small town south of Hamilton.

The Ontario government Friday agreed to a $20-million compensation fund, settling a class action lawsuit filed five years ago at the height of the trouble.

The deal was approved by Superior Court Judge David Crane.

It was in February of 2006 that a handful of natives from the nearby Six Nations reserve first walked onto Douglas Creek Estates, a residential subdivision then under construction along the town’s main street.

With the Ontario Provincial Police and the Ontario government determined to handle the occupation as a land claims dispute or “reclamation”, the protesters remained unmolested on the land, their numbers and confidence growing.

After repeated court orders to remove the protesters, the OPP belatedly moved in April of that year with an ill-planned early morning raid which ended with the police retreating and furious protesters proclaiming victory.

What happened in the weeks and months after was widespread lawlessness that ranged from the minor to the serious. It included the destruction of a hydro tower (which caused a three-day blackout to the area), the torching of a bridge, the hijacking of a police car with officers inside it and unprovoked assaults by natives upon a local builder, who suffered a permanent brain injury, an elderly couple whose offence was to drive by the site and a Hamilton TV crew who dared try to video that.

At the height of the tensions, residents living near the site had to show native-issued “passports” even to get to and from their homes and were subjected to native-imposed curfews and arbitrary search and seizure.

In June that year, lawyer John Findlay filed a class action suit on behalf of about 440 residents, 400 businesses and a smaller group of subcontractors who had been involved in the home construction on the site.

“It’s quite a good settlement in terms of a class proceeding,” Findlay told PostMedia Friday, a half-hour after Judge Crane approved the deal.

He said the funds will be distributed according to a government formula which rates the “nuisances” or “impacts” suffered by business and homeowners.

The government has already paid $15.8-million to buy the land from Dave and John Henning, the brothers who were developing the site when it was occupied, and an undisclosed amount to Dave Brown and his wife Dana Chatwell, who lived immediately adjacent to the site and whose lives and business (Ms. Chatwell had just opened a hair salon in the couple’s home) were destroyed by the occupation./

As well, a number of residents who also live nearby and who opted out of the class action are still pursuing their own lawsuit against the government.

Though things are quiet now in the pretty town, the occupation persists at a low level. Though the Ontario government, and thus the Ontario people, own the land, only natives are allowed on the site, and the area remains an eyesore.